


Carry On

by PinkLetterDay



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Past Violence, Reaffirmation, Soul-Searching, Suicidal Thoughts, This poor lad has been through the wringer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 07:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13313406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay
Summary: Oliver's favourite Christmas movie is It's A Wonderful Life. But not for the reason anyone would think.





	Carry On

Everyone jokes that Oliver's favourite Christmas movie is Die Hard. Only Thea knows that it's actually It's A Wonderful Life.

Beause not only is he a secret cheeseball and a sucker for domestic tradition, but also the idea of your existence meaning so much to so many people, touching other people's lives without ever knowing it, has always called to him.

As the Queen heir he'd been given so many speeches about expectations, responsibility and leadership and none of the direction that should have accompanied them. Which meant he had grown up floundering with a paralyzing terror of fucking up completely and being a disappointment. In typical Ollie fashion he had coped with this by _deliberately_ becoming a disappointment and screw up. Failing by not trying is always much more comforting than trying and failing, because otherwise you'd have to deal with proof of your inherent inadequacy. But then you also have to deal with the fact that you aren't doing much good in the world and the resultant complete lack of self-esteem.

So Ollie, every Christmas, would pretend to be humouring his Mom or Thea but secretly love watching the old black and white movie.

*

After he is shipwrecked, the island doesn't offer time or room for existential crises beyond "are you going to live or not?" All he can think about is coming back home.

And he does - in secret, with Amanda Waller's gun to his head, and it's the nightmare cousin to the movie. Not a world aching for the void of his existence but one left uprooted and devastated by its sudden end and the choices that led to it. It's a hell of a way to realize his life has always had value simply by virtue of continuing in the world. A dead man can't affect anything, whether he is a saint or a sinner, but a living one can seek redemption. Mistakes can be learned from, relationships can be rebuilt. The value of a life is in its living, not in an arbitrary scale of cosmic judgement.

That is the second turning point in Ollie's life.

The third one is little Akio dying in his arms. He has finally given his all to one purpose and failed as shatteringly and absolutely as one person can possibly fail. His worst nightmare come to fruition.

 _Yes, Oliver Queen,_ sneers the universe. _You are fundamentally a fuck up._

What then is the point of continued living? Of trying to go home? Of doing anything? He had chosen to survive. For what? All he's good for is fighting and fucking up. Why is he not dead? Because he's just _lucky_ and there's no real reason for any of it?

Amanda picks him out of the gutter he had drunk himself into and drops him back in hell for the second time. And suddenly, he discovers slavery, magic and a flame-slender hope in Taiana. Not only is the world a whole lot bigger, deeper and more unfathomable than he had ever believed possible, but while he was fucking around trying to find reasons to continue, there had been people gripping the tether of life with both bloodied hands and snarling defiance at pure evil. And those people are being cut down. Taiana, with her gentle hands and fierce hope, begs for death at his hands, and as her neck snaps so does something inside him.

Fuck good and evil and fuck reasons.

He wants blood.

The thing he turns into in Moscow should have scared him shitless. It doesn't. There is an exhilarating freedom in becoming this single-minded, lowering beast that can kill without second thought or remorse. There is only Kovarr and his promise to Taiana, there is only the face of evil and his determination to end it. And if he fails again, well. He and Taiana are both dead anyway.

He is completely at home in the freezing cold, the human scum and the blood and bullets, exchanging favours with the Bratva. His heart is quiet and his mind is alive. Oliver Queen is dead at the hand of _Kapushin_ and it feels. So. Good.

He doesn't realize that this too is childish arrogance. The life of a beast is simple, but man always triumphs over even the most dangerous fangs and claws nature can create because man _thinks_. Oliver tries to be a beast to end a beast but Kovarr proves to be very much a man and brings Oliver under his heel.

But Kovarr is a man and therefore arrogant and sadistic. He lets Oliver escape.

He has tried being a hero, he doesn't even have to try to be a fuck up and now he realizes that he definitely is not cut out to be an animal. What is he supposed to be, then?

Talia answers. _Be a weapon_.

A weapon only has a target. A mission, an objective and an end result. Good or bad is irrelevant to the fact of its completion.

The rush of endorphins that accompanies each kill bears no relevance to his skill as an archer. The desperate pleading in a man's eyes has no bearing on doing what needs to be done. Failure simply means refocusing his sights.

Accountability, responsibility, initiative. The Queen family name. The sins of his father burns a hole in the notebook against his breast as he leaves Kovarr's corpse behind on the island and swings back to Starling, purpose burning in his eyes.

He has a mission from his father. And finally, after a foolish misspent boyhood and incompetent, selfish youth, he finally has the direction he needs.

He is going to make a difference.

*

He doesn't watch A Wonderful Life that Christmas. It means nothing to him.

*

He learns some important things that year.

First of which is that a man is not a weapon. He can be _like_ a weapon. But there is a significant difference between the two.

A man can be hurt when the woman he loves looks at him in fear.

A man can be faced with equally dire choices and still choose wrong.

A man can fail so horribly that he lets a city collapse on top of a thousand people.

A man's heart can break when his best friend dies in his arms.

It is only his bow that does not weep.

*

Lian Yu is a harsh refuge, but it offers no more answers than it ever did. He's kind of sick of himself by the time Digg and Felicity parachute in to confront him. And they're right. He has to go in some direction from this point on, since going back seems to be going nowhere. He comes back home, tries to focus on his family, and the city sucks him back into its greedy maw.

He watches the movie that year, haunted by Shado and Sara. Haunted by himself, really. There was a reason his younger self loved this movie. Who was that younger self? What had it been trying to tell him? Everything seems imbued with meaning and frustratingly elusive.

His mother dies. He's tired. He would like to follow her now. But they don't let him.

They win the city. They lose Sara. Barry wakes up with powers and he suddenly realizes those unfathomable forces he had glimpsed in Lian Yu are about to crash upon the world in his wake in a tsunami, devastating and changing the world order.

And every Christmas he watches It's A Wonderful Life almost religiously, clinging to it like a tether to - what? He doesn't know. The memories of his parents snuggling on the couch beside him, Tommy sprawled at his feet and little Thea on his lap? But Robert had been cheating on Moira even then, Thea had been conceived of Malcolm and they had been plotting terrible things, unbeknownst to him and Tommy. Was any of it ever real?

*

  
After the island blows up and Samantha dies, William comes to live with him. That Christmas it's just the Queens in Oliver's apartment, even Raisa having gone home for the holidays.

Oliver is watching his favourite Christmas movie alone in the living room, Thea's head in his lap. She's sleeping, fresh from the hospital and still needing rest and care. But they had gotten a small Christmas tree, despite William's lukewarm interest and there are some presents under it.

Oliver hears the soft pad of his son's feet on the hardwood but keeps still. He continues eating popcorn and watching Clarence and George Bailey.

"What're you watching?"

"Hey, buddy," Oliver carefully turns around. "Can't sleep?"

William shrugs. "You like old movies?"

"Just this one." Oliver waits for William to tentatively sit on the edge of the couch near Thea's feet. "Ever watched It's A Wonderful Life?"

"Nah. Mom said it was too cheesy."

Oliver huffs a laugh. "I guess it is, a little."

"How come you like it?" William looks at him, bemused, as though he cant imagine Arrow Dad liking saccharine Christmas movies.

"Well, I used to watch it with my parents and your Aunt Thea when I was a kid."

"You're not a kid anymore," William observes.

"No," Oliver says, "but the message is still important."

"What's that?" His son's young voice has no business being so derisively bitter. "Be glad you're alive?"

"That," Oliver says steadily, even as his heart aches. "But also -"

The words come gently, as though the knowledge had been safely stored inside him until just this moment.

"It means don't be conceited. That no matter how much you may have fuc- messed up - you still matter. Your life isn't about _you_ \- or not _just_ about you. It's about how by just living, well or badly, you change other people's lives. Sometimes for the worse," and Oliver can't help the stab in his heart as he looks at William, "but sometimes you can turn even that around for the better."

"It means everything you do  _matters_ ," Oliver says, and then forces himself to relax when his son startles at the sudden vehemence, "to other people. And to think about them means to think about yourself too. It means that _you_ matter, William," he has to swallow past the lump in his own throat as his son's eyes begin to shimmer. "You will always, _always_ matter."

He reaches out a hand but William ducks under his arm and buries his soft head in Oliver's shoulder. Sitting under the glow of the tree lights, his son's tears on his neck and Thea's head heavy on his lap, Oliver feels his loves, past and present surround him, the ghost of the boy he was fading into the glowing memory of a Christmas fireside. And something in his heart finally loosens, lightens and tumbles free.


End file.
